Search Results for: cia secret prisons

Here, the author Pitasanna Shanmugathas a graduate from Vermont Law looks at the reprisals faced by prominent whistleblowers in the wake of Julian Assange’s release, and the threat whistleblower prosecutions raise to media freedom and the principles of transparency and accountability in government… The release of Julian Assange after years of legal battles highlights the [...]

The Russian Prosecutor General’s office announced Thursday that it approved an espionage indictment against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since March 2023, and sent his case to the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the city of Yekaterinburg. Gershkovich’s detention has been condemned by his employer and press freedom groups, [...]

Publisher and activist Julian Assange appealed to London’s High Court this week in a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the US to face espionage charges. Following the hearing which spanned Tuesday and Wednesday, judges will consider whether Assange can appeal an earlier ruling ordering his extradition from the UK to the US, where he [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Lithuania liable on Tuesday for assisting the US with the torture of a man from Saudi Arabia at Detention Site Violet, a secret CIA prison in Lithuania, in 2005.  The court found that Lithuania violated several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights against the applicant [...]

Marjorie Cohn is a professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. She has authored publications arguing against the legality of the 2003 US military intervention in Iraq as well as the US-led NATO interventions into Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. Professor Cohn is also a national board member of Assange [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 7-2 decision that information related to torture at CIA “black sites” is protected under the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to bar the release of information when it would endanger national security. Between December 2003 and September 2004, respondent Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Zubaydah), a [...]

North Carolina has an important connection to the “state secrets” at the center of an October 6 US Supreme Court argument. In this case, Guantanamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah seeks testimony from two former CIA contractors, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, on torture he suffered at a secret CIA prison in Poland. The contractors’ evidence would [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in US v. Zubaydah on Wednesday, a case involving a plaintiff’s right to discovery of privileged national security information. The US sought a writ after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit compelled the US to confirm or deny that it had a CIA facility in [...]

Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Zubaydah, who has been detained for 19 years without charges or a trial, filed a complaint on Friday with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions (UNWGAD) requesting intervention in his case. Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan after the September 11 attacks and was held and tortured by the CIA in [...]

Army Colonel James Pohl, the US Military judge tasked with overseeing 9/11 cases, announced his retirement Monday before the completion of the trials that began in May 2012 and have seen numerous delays. “I have made a personal decision not to request an additional voluntary retiree recall and thus I will leave active duty after 38 [...]